It’s a wild time for Bitcoin. The leading cryptocurrency’s price surged higher and higher in March to break its 2021 peak price, spot Bitcoin ETFs are spurring wider interest in the coin, and this month’s Bitcoin halving and Runes token protocol are driving significant excitement.
Given all of that, it’s no surprise that Bitcoin Ordinals are white hot lately, with the NFT-like assets taking over the market and shaking up the battle between marketplaces as well. If you’ve been sitting on the sidelines, now’s the time to take a closer look at Ordinals and the growing buzz around the on-chain Bitcoin assets.
Ahead of the Bitcoin halving and Runes protocol launch expected on April 20, here’s a look at seven of the biggest and most in-demand Ordinals projects—and what you should know about them. Some already have Runes token plans, while others may join that party soon, given the growing hype around the token standard.
NodeMonkes
You might call NodeMonkes the CryptoPunks of the Ordinals ecosystem. Like Punks on Ethereum, they’ve taken a prominent perch as the most valuable 10,000-item profile picture (PFP) collection on Bitcoin.
These chunky-pixel avatars start at $45,000 worth of Bitcoin, and the project’s entry price briefly passed the USD value of the Bored Ape Yacht Club on Ethereum. One NodeMonke even sold for more than $1 million worth of BTC in March.
Bitcoin Ordinals Boom Yields Record $1 Million NodeMonkes Sale
Ordinals—the Bitcoin equivalent of NFTs—are on fire as Bitcoin’s price nears an all-time high, and it’s the NodeMonkes collection that is leading the charge after a heavy sales weekend that culminated with the project’s first-ever sale above $1 million worth of BTC. NodeMonkes is the top-selling individual Ordinals or NFT project over the last seven days, according to data from CryptoSlam, with nearly $45 million worth of secondary market sales during that span. Over the last 24 hours, only Ethe...
Runestone
Launched in March, Runestone is a project spanning more than 112,000 Ordinals assets were airdropped free to collectors who met certain criteria during the first year of the Bitcoin protocol’s existence. These gleaming digital crystals have since become in demand, and due to the large size of the collection, its market cap is currently the largest on Bitcoin at $650 million.
Holders have been promised up to three token airdrops once the Bitcoin Runes protocol launches later this month alongside the halving, so that’s surely driving some of the trading interest. The first token will be a meme coin based on a dog, believe it or not.
Taproot Wizards/Quantum Cats
Taproot Wizards was the first prominent Bitcoin Ordinals collection, and the company has since gone on to raise $7.5 million in funding to “finally move Bitcoin forward” with development of culture and infrastructure, as co-founder Udi Wertheimer told Decrypt last year.
While the actual Taproot Wizards assets aren’t tradeable, the company dropped one of the biggest Ordinals collections to date in January with Quantum Cats, which included an auction through Sotheby’s. The project has a market cap of $68 million as of this writing.
Taproot Wizards Launch Quantum Cats Collection As Bitcoin Inscriptions
As a tribute to code developed in the early days of the Bitcoin network by creator Satoshi Nakamoto, Ordinals developer Taproot Wizards is launching a new collection of NFTs on the Bitcoin blockchain. “‘OP_CAT’ is an ancient ‘op code’ in Bitcoin that was introduced by Satoshi in the first release but later disabled,” Taproots Wizards co-founder Udi Wertheimer told Decrypt. “OP_CAT is shorthand for ‘concatenate’ in nerd-speak; it’s just a way to put two strings of text together.” Even though it w...
Bitcoin Puppets
You’ve probably seen Bitcoin Puppets plastered all over Crypto Twitter, and the Ordinals project has quickly become one of the most valuable collections in the space. It’s also decidedly one of the most visually unique projects in Bitcoin, with monkey characters that look like they were quickly bashed together in Microsoft Paint.
Add in drug references and other random props, plus a price point starting at $28,000 worth of Bitcoin, and these Puppets are grabbing plenty of attention. Also hot: Rune Pups, which were airdropped free to Bitcoin Puppets holders, and the associated BRC-20 token.
RSIC Metaprotocol
Before Runestone significantly raised the stakes, RSIC Metaprotocol grabbed the Bitcoin world’s attention in January by airdropping 21,000 inscriptions to wallets of Ordinals collectors in the space. With a name recalling ASIC mining computers, the RSIC project is a gamified campaign that lets holders mine tokens for the upcoming Runes protocol launch. The buzz around the project has catapulted its market cap above $130 million at present.
Someone Airdropped 21K Ordinals to Bitcoin Users as Part of Mysterious Game
Sparking the latest mystery surrounding Bitcoin Ordinals, someone airdropped 21,000 digital inscriptions as a part of an apparent game promotion on Sunday. “A technological arms race has begun—21,000 cutting-edge RSICs, manufactured in our factory, are being sent from our distribution centers to the Ordinals community,” a message inscribed in inscription 56,754,110 reads. “The RSICs are designed for the sole purpose of securing a bag of runes. These runes will be etched in our foundry after the...
OnChainMonkey
OnChainMonkey is an interesting anomaly on this list, as it was a long-running project on Ethereum before the Ordinals protocol launched. Unlike some projects (like DeGods) that have minted Ordinals alongside their existing collections, OnChainMonkey opted to let users migrate their Ethereum NFTs over to the chain—and a community organization offered a KARMA token to those who did so.
Bitcoin Runes Launch at the Halving: Here's Everything You Need to Know
Bitcoin is front and center again, and orange coin lovers everywhere have plenty to be excited about: new all-time high prices, the upcoming halving, rising demand for Ordinals—and soon, something totally new called Runes. And while Runes won’t hit Bitcoin until the halving—currently set for April 19 as of this writing—when the supply of newly minted BTC is once again cut in half by slashing miner rewards, the project is already getting a lot of hype and attention. Here’s what you need to know....
Ordinal Maxi Biz
Like Bitcoin Puppets, Ordinal Maxi Biz really leans into a lo-fi aesthetic. In this case, each of the 5,200+ Ordinals assets looks like a simple pen-drawn riff on one of Ethereum’s iconic CryptoPunks, looping in surreal doodle designs, existential and societal themes, and other eye-catching details. It’s a collaboration between artist Tony Tafuro, zk-Shark, and NULLISH, and one of the most valuable Ordinals collections, with assets starting at nearly $30,000 worth of Bitcoin.
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.
Editor's note: This story was updated after publication to clarify details around the KARMA token.
